


A Voice in the Wind (The Remembrance Remix)

by navaan



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Introspection, POV Female Character, Post-Canon, Reminiscing, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-19 22:28:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7379947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Annie spends a day at the beach with her son and remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Voice in the Wind (The Remembrance Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [geckoholic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/gifts).
  * Inspired by [You Make No Sound But I Can Hear You In The Wind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/371053) by [geckoholic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/pseuds/geckoholic). 



Marin is asleep on the picnic blanket she brought. It has been a lovely day spent running around on the sand and getting his feet wet, but now he’s exhausted. And it’s alright. They don’t have anywhere to be. They can do things at their own pace.

After the constant stream of her her six year old son's chattering Annie is happy to enjoy the silence, the soft sounds of the waves breaking on the shore and the even softer sound of the breeze in her hair. It’s soothing and calm. It’s like Finnick whispering in her ear. It’s like he’s holding her safe in his embrace. It's like he's still here.

Once Finnick had promised her forever, back in a world when promises like that were dangerous and hard to keep. She strokes her fingers through Marin's soft hair and the boy sighs in his sleep. Finnick had always tried hard to keep his promises and in his own way he has never broken this one either. He is still here, in the sound of the waves, in the smell of the salty sea air, in the way the sun glitters on the waves, in the way Marin, who has never met his father, moves and talks and acts. Finnick will forever be alive in Annie's memory and in his legacy: all the stories of Finnick's prowess and bravery that people are still telling each other all over Dsitrict 4 and across all the other Districts in Panem.

“I'm sorry, you can't be here, darling,” she whispers to the wind and smiles. “We miss you. We love you.”

It's her own ritual way to deal with his absence, silently thanking him for leaving something of himself behind to love, to hold on to, to be brave and strong for.

She tells Marin sometimes that his father died a hero and when they go and see his Uncle Peeta and Aunt Katniss they tell him how much he resembles his father. They tell the stories, just like Annie does and Marin listens with rapt attention.

One day he will be old enough to hear the whole story, the story she remembers and loses herself in on days like these, when she has time to reminisce. 

Their love had always been a complication. Finnick had been the kind of Victor the Game Masters hoped for. Annie, well, Annie had been a scared girl with two dedicated mentors. She'd also been lucky. She knows she would not have made it out o the Games in any other arena. She had never been a fighter like Finnick.

The nightmares of the arena would forever be with her, but int those early days she had barely been able to sleep. Finnick had softly whispered in her ear: “It's okay, Annie. We all have those. It's the few among us who don't have them you need keep away from.”

She had clung to him in her desperation, in her need for some security and he had let her, had softly spoken of his own fears. The Finnick she had met after her Games had been different from the public face of the self-assured, young and handsome Victor he had presented himself as. “It's a game, Annie. To people in the Capitol everything is a game. Our lives mean nothing to them.”

And that was why any Victor in those days was better off alone. 

But they couldn't stay apart. Mags had watched them so sadly, but there wasn't much happiness to be had. Even their time together was always cut short, with Finnick being called up to the Capitol at a whim. He never spoke of what happened when he was called by Snow, but Annie saw the marks after. He tried to hide them at first, fearing to hurt her feelings. But the first time she stroked a dark purple mark of fingerprints someone had left on his hips and he flinched, she knew more about his story than she had ever wanted to know. She was a wreck in those days, fearful and always close to breaking down, but at that moment she just took him in her arms and let him hide his face against her chest. They were both so young and so helpless.

And suddenly they were each other's strength and liability. 

Today she thought that it was no accident at all that Finnick had been called up to the Capitol to “entertain” a good friend of President Snow on the day the Quarter Quell was announced. Finnick was a tool to Snow, but he must have known that he was also one of the more dangerous Victors. She cried at the news, understood immediately what was going to happen to all of them. The memory of fear, of walking up and down in a frenzy, of trying to stay awake until Finnick finally returned to her side was edged into her whole being. She still remembered it clear as day: How he returned much, much later than expected, how he had softly spoken her name, how she had woken, how they had clung to each other, in fear and anger and sorrow.

“You can do it again, Finnick, right?” she had asked. “You won. You can do it again?”

“Annie, don't you see? He hopes it will be the two of us. All the starcrossed lovers made to suffer for defying him.”

“You can win again,” she said and pulled him closer. There was no room for the truth at a night like this.

One day she is going to show Marin the recordings of the day of the day his father had been reaped again and his mother allowed old Mags to go to her death. They had all known whose names would come from the bowl and still her heart had stopped when she'd heard her name again, a flashback had thrown her right back to that first fateful day that had made her miserable destiny. But Finnick, oh, Finnick. She couldn't even say goodbye to him in the way of lovers because all the cameras were trained on them. 

“Your mother wasn't brave,” she will say to Marin. “I only wanted him to stay. I knew the nothing of the plan. But I knew it was time to fight back and that Finnick was angry, that he wouldn't go down without a fight. I only wanted him safe; safely by my side and not thrown into another Hunger Games.”

She had been so upset, watching the coverage every day, watching the first days in the arena so afraid to watch him die. Once a friend had to pry her away from the obsessive watching, because she'd been chocking with sobs, unable to stop herself from crying. Her own memories mingled with the new violence.

“I really knew nothing of the plan. But I wasn't the only one. Even Peeta and Katniss weren't in on it and they were right there with you father and Mags and Johanna in the arena fighting for their lives. We were better off not knowing, Peeta and me. We couldn't give them anything, when they took us.”

And that is where her story will get complicated. How do you speak of the things the Capitol had put them through then, because Finnick and Katniss had escaped, because a rebellion had been planned and put into action right there under everyone's noses. She'd been so afraid, right until they came to take her – because then she knew for sure Finnick had to still be alive. Snow needed her for leverage. Why would he even care about Annie if Finnick hadn't escaped?

The darkness of her cell was oppressive, but it was like Finnick was right there beside her in her prison, telling her to be strong. 

She strokes a hand through Marin's hair. The color he has inherited from his father.

Perhaps she can bare to watch the wedding dance with him sometime soon. She really wants Marin to know his father. And what better way to show him the true Finnick than showing him that much too short period of freedom and happiness?

One day Marin will ask where Annie had been on the day of Capitol's capitulation and the begin of an new era and she'll be honest and tell him that she hadn't been able to stop crying for hours, hysterical and devastated, at the news that Finnick would never return to her side ever again. The happiest day had been a sad day for her.

Her son stirs. “Mama,” he says and sits up. His eyes are such a bright happy blue and he immediately looks out at the sea. She expects him to jump up and run down to the water again right away, instead he remains sitting on his haunches and watches the horizon. “Can you hear it?” he asks.

The wind blows sand towards them and the waves break on land in a hypnotic rhythm. 

She hears it, felt it, Finnick's voice in her ear. 

 

_I'm always with you._

 

It brings a smile to her face. Of course, he would be proud of both of them, for living, for building a new life and a new Panem, not letting his sacrifice go to waste.

“I know,” she whispers to the wind. “And you'll always be.”


End file.
